Making some sense of suffering

The big picture

While perusing Steemit the past few days, I noted an intense article on a troll. Some people have been harassed by that troll, some were following him, tracking him down, noticing his movements. Others were responding to him, mostly out of pain.

Then there is another article on #pedogate. A well placed politician has been arrested for possession of child porn. It is astounding that anyone in their right minds would engage in such material, but I suppose with 7 billion people on the planet, there are going to be extremes.

There are wars, big and small. There are personal conflicts. People exchanging brick-bats, insults, veiled offenses, subtle innuendos. Suffering is pretty much everywhere and most of it is caused by humans to other humans.

Suffering is caused by humans who are suffering. There are no exceptions. Suffering will drive a person to do an awful thing to another person. As noted above, the continuum of acts we like to call "evil" ranges far and wide. But the thing that I always keep in my mind is that people who cause suffering are already suffering themselves.

Awareness of our own suffering

This is not to make an excuse for bad or immoral behavior. The point of my article is that much of our suffering can be stopped with awareness. If we truly want to bring peace to the world, we must start by becoming aware of our own suffering.

Anyone who starts a war, murders another, injures another, or insults another, out of spite is already suffering. But if we think of it as input and output, then the results can be expected. If you put pain into a system, you can expect to get pain out.

People who commit painful acts upon another are experiencing their own pain. In their anger or spite, they are not capable of accepting their reality. They are not capable of making a change without trying to change other people. Nobody likes being told what to do, and will seek justification for the control demanded by another. But for the abuser, threat of pain or pain itself seems like the shortest path to change. The path of least resistance.

But the path of least resistance is not to cause pain upon someone else, for that only creates resistance. The path of least resistance is to become aware of one's own pain and suffering. Adults who make a habit of causing pain to others are often unaware of the pain they are in, they are unconscious to the source of their pain. All adults who cause pain to others, are imposing, in one way or another, the fate of their childhood upon others. Some people seek enormous power just so that they can keep on causing pain to others, or to hide their own pain.

A brief tour

I've touched upon this subject here in Steemit, but I've got numerous articles on this very subject at my blog, The Digital Firehose. You might find the following articles of interest (eventually, I will post them here for posterity):

Power struggles from childhood to adulthood and the quest for world peace

Corruption is the symptom, child abuse is the cause

A brief psychological analysis of political oppression in the context of the 2016 US election

The political implications of the discoveries of Alice Miller and an unconscious electorate

Democracy: for best results, teach your children the skill of self-regulation

In any direction I choose to look, when I see someone doing some awful thing to another, I see the hidden roots of child abuse. Abuse is learned behavior. Learned behavior is passed on, like a survival skill, but it is a not a very profitable skill. You cannot earn money with abuse - well, you could, but who wants to do that for a living?

Happy people have no need to cause pain

A happy and well adjusted person has no need to cause suffering to others. A truly conscious and happy person cannot even cause suffering of others for money. Capitalism could make that happen, of course, but that's another article. The point is, any person who is aware of their own suffering has now the capacity to change course so that they need not be in conflict with themselves or others, anymore.

Like finding oneself on a map, awareness allows us to accept where we are right now, and to move where we want to be. In peace.

I offer this article not to make excuses for those who would abuse others, or even to suggest pity for them. While it is possible that abusers would take notice of this article and perhaps make a change, this article is not for them. I've seen abusers refuse to take heed of the warnings, of the suggestion that that they too are suffering. I will offer it once, twice or even thrice, but then I let it go and keep clear.

This article is for those who truly want to bring peace to the world.

Fellowship is a lot more appealing than ending it all

This article is intended to increase awareness of the fact that people who seek to impose suffering upon others are suffering. I've seen pictures of hedge fund managers standing at the edge of a rooftop just before they jump off. They knew that they made money off of the suffering of others. They were suffering and didn't know how to make the voices stop without ending their own life. That's why people commit suicide. They're suffering. They can no longer tolerate the knowledge of their own pain or the pain they've imposed upon others, so they end their life.

But that too, is a permanent solution to a very temporary problem. The solution to suffering comes in parts. The first part is to make sense of our own suffering. Typical resources include therapy, group therapy, 12-step meetings (suffering is addictive), and writing. Lots and lots of writing.

There are great books on the subject, too, but arranging for encounters with other humans who are suffering as you do, will bring far more relief than any book or any amount of writing. Collaborating with other people who suffer likewise is a great way to learn the skills we need to lessen or even stop our suffering. Seeing other eyes, hearing other voices and knowing you've been heard can bring enormous relief to suffering.

The next part is finding a practical solution for the suffering. in other words, once we know our suffering, and the proximate cause, the next step is to change our behavior. When we change our behavior, we change the way we think and feel. Even yogis will tell you that if you change your posture, you will change how you feel.

One resource that I'm always happy to plug is a book called, "Raising Human Beings", by Dr. Ross W. Greene. (He has a website, too: www.livesinthebalance.org.) It's a book about how to deal with challenging behavior in children. If you have kids, you will find a very different way to see your kids than you do now. You will find that you can collaborate with your kids to solve the very problems that kids encounter and give rise to the challenging behavior that they sometimes exhibit.

Adults exhibit challenging behavior, just like kids

But that book is not just for kids. It's for adults, too. Raising Human Beings completely changed my outlook on people. Dr. Greene says that kids would do better if they could. If they had the skills to do better, they would.

Adults are the same way. Adults who do awful things to other people are exhibiting challenging behavior when they do, because they lack the skills to do better. We could talk about motivation all day, but the bottom line is if they had better skills, they would do something else with their lives.

If you're an anarchist (I'm still on the fence, but I'm leaning that way), you're probably already familiar with the concepts described in Raising Human Beings. If you want people to organize peacefully, the concepts in that book are just one of the many recipes available for raising a generation of anarchists.

But to get there, to get to world wide peace, we must be aware of our suffering and be ready to change it. We must be willing to stand down and drop the need to make other people change. We must be the change we want to see, for people are always modeling the behavior of others. We learn by imitation, by trying to do what others do.

Once we decide we want to know our suffering, and why we're suffering, then we no longer need to make others suffer. We can finally set others free.

100% original content by myself.